It is often necessary to modify the configuration of a network device, such as a router. Typically, to effect a configuration change in a router a user would issue one or more command line interface (CLI) commands to the router. As each CLI command is submitted to the router, the router interprets the commands and executes the command immediately. As each CLI command is executed, the command effects a change to the current operational configuration of the router.
This approach has several disadvantages. First, more than one user may wish to modify the configuration of the network device at the same time. If two or more users are submitting CLI commands to the router simultaneously, then the commands from each user will be executed as they are entered. As a result, the configuration changes entered by one party will interfere with the configuration changes entered by any other party.
Second, as each command is interpreted and executed as it is submitted to the router, it is possible that one command submitted by a user may be executed, while another command submitted by the same user may not be executed, e.g., the command is not executed because the command contains a syntax error or the command may not be a valid command. Consequently, only a partial set of the desired configuration changes may be performed on the network device. However, this may result in an undesirable configuration for the network device, as the resulting configuration was not intended.
Consequently, there is a need in the art to effect a modification of a network device without incurring the disadvantages associated with the above described approaches. The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.